The Contentious Centrist

"Civilization is not self-supporting. It is artificial. If you are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilization -- you are done." (Ortega y Gasset)

Saturday, December 09, 2017

Jean-Paul Sartre on defeating anti-Semitism:

“The
cause of the Jews would be half won if only their friends brought to
their defense a little of the passion and the perseverance their enemies
use to bring them down.In order to waken this passion, what is needed
id not to appeal to the generosity of the Aryans- with even the best of
them, that virtue is in eclipse. What must be done is to point out to
each one that the fate of the Jews is his fate. Not one Frenchman will
be free so long as the Jews do not enjoy the fullness of their rights. Not one Frenchman will be secure so long as a single Jew – in France or in the world at large – can fear for his life”

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

I left the following comment (27 June 2017 ~ 6:40 pm). Awaiting moderation."That may be what the flag means to you, but other people find it offensive.”

In the Middle Ages, Easter times were hazardous for Jews in
Christendom. The Christians for whom Easter was a time of mourning for
Jesus’ death thought that the Jewish Passover which is more or less at
the same time as Easter, was a celebration of the death of Jesus. One
may wonder where they got that idea? Their priests encouraged them to
interpret Jewish preparations for Passover in this light. With the
result that Easter time was often a good time to stage pogroms,
expulsions and other such Jewish delights.

When Jews tried to explain that there was nothing true in this perception, they were told:

That may be what the holiday means to you, but other people find it offensive.”
_____

What’s the difference between Far-Right antisemitism and Far-Left antisemitism?

Far-Right antisemitism is hatred and fear of Jews qua Jews, all Jews.

Far-Left antisemitism is hatred of what they call Zionists, those 98%
of world Jews who either live in Israel or support Israel, or have no
problem with the idea and existence of a Jewish state.

What makes it possible for Far Left Antisemitism to claim they are
not antisemitic is the (possibly) 2%* of Jews who don’t support the
Jewish state.

If there are 13M Jews in the world, Far Right antisemites hate all 13M of them.

Far Left antisemites hate “only” 12,740,000 of them.

So what is the difference between Far-Right antisemitism and Far-Left antisemitism?

Far Left antisemites believe they have a really good reason to hate
most of the Jews, unlike Far Right antisemites who are much less
bothered to look for good reasons to hate Jews.

Monday, May 29, 2017

"Unfortunately, the Israeli government does not yearn for Palestinian Gandhis." he laments later in the article.

No, no Israeli or Jew should yearn for any Gandhi. As a Jew who likes to adorn himself with his pristine Jewishness, Beinart should know his people's history, as
it actually unfolded, not as he arranges it in his imagination.

In what role can Gandhi, possibly, serve as a moral model for Jews, or anybody?

"The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me."

Never mind that he openly admitted knowing that

"the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history."

What was his humanistic solution? Denial of national home on the one
hand and German genocidal threats fully perceived as real on the other,
what were the Jews to do?

But never fear. He had a solution. The saintly Mahatma calmly proposed in 1938:

" If I were a Jew and were born in Germany.. as the tallest gentile
German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I
would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment.
And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in
civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are
bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept
the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now.
And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength
and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world
outside Germany can... But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for
voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned
into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance
of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing,
death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking
that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep."

“Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest
crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the
butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from
cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

Gandhi was severely disappointed in the Jews for the Holocaust.

There is no winning with this guy, no survival, no life, no future for
the Jews. This is the moral model that Beinart raises his gaze to, in
utter cringe.

Friday, April 28, 2017

Corrie

aligned herself sentimentally and
seamlessly with suffering Palestinians, reserving for them her absolute
anger and attendant
pity to the extent that suffering Israelis merited nothing but a
sneering hatred from her. Corrie’s idealism did not proceed from love
but from ideologically induced hatred. She was a de-facto apologist for
Palestinian terrorism, and she died trying to prevent the work of an
Israeli bulldozer, which was searching for munitions buried in the
ground . Contrary to Palestinian reports and what is generally claimed,
the bulldozer was not there to demolish a house, (though houses used as
cover for weapon-smuggling tunnels were demolished by the IDF, but not
on that particular day). Any which way you slice it, those munitions
were there to be utilized in attacks against innocent civilians. Corrie
died protecting terrorist weapons. She was completely indifferent to the
deaths these weapons spelled at a time when suicide bombings were a
matter of daily, sometimes hourly, occurrence in Israel.

Btw,
when I look at this photo of Corrie what strikes me is less her
complete self-abandon to mindless hatred. What I notice is the
difference between her semi-crazed demeanor and the baffled and smiling
faces of the Palestinian kids, who surround her. What can it mean?

Friday, October 14, 2016

Sticks in his Craw: Bob Dylan, the Nobel Prize and Arab displeasure

Even if the Jews have not all been geniuses,their general average of intelligence
and intellectuality is far above our general average--and that is one of our reasons for wishing to drive them out of the higher forms of business and the
professions.

It is the swollen envy of pygmy minds--meanness, injustice.

(Mark Twain)

Asad Abukhalil, "Angry Arab News Letter", professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, has a different theory as to why Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature this year:

"Did Bob Dylan win the Nobel Prize in literature for this poem [The Neighborhood Bully]?He
wrote this after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, when
Dylan--who admired Meir Kahane--supported Israeli war crimes and
massacres."

I'd also have liked to believe this song
played a pivotal role in the decision of the Nobel committee but it's
unlikely. However, I do derive a certain perverse pleasure from imagining that this
selection sticks in Angry Arab's craw to the point of incontinent
vomiting.

This walking incarnation of
ugliness, Arabofascism, and implacable irredentism, teaches young
students on how to read texts and historical events. And then you wonder
about the condition of American society these days.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Is anyone really surprised that Obama is making good on his promise to Ali AbuNimah*?

Is anybody really surprised that the bottom line of Obama's
"diplomatic" assault on Israel is: It's the Jews ' fault, for wanting to
live where they are not wanted?

Is anybody really surprised that
Obama shares Black Lives Matter's ethos, according to which the darker
the skin colour, the more virtuous you are?

"The Obama administration is manufacturing a crisis with Israel in
anticipation of a post-election diplomatic push targeting the Jewish
state, and this past week launched a series of broadsides criticizing
the Israelis through the media and in press briefings, according to
congressional sources and Jewish-American officials who spoke to THE
WEEKLY STANDARD.

The White House and State Department lashed out
after the Israelis advanced plans to build in areas the administration
considers to be off-limits to new Israeli construction, using language
that reporters noted is usually reserved for terror attacks.

Asked by journalists why the administration stated that it "strongly
condemn[ed]" Israel's plans to advance construction, a phrase ordinarily
used "to denounce acts of terrorism," White House spokesman Josh
Earnest replied that the construction "provoke[s] strong feelings in the
administration." In that briefing, Earnest also suggested that Israel
betrayed commitments to Washington, while a State Department official
separately said Israel would be "cementing… perpetual occupation" if it
built the houses."

"the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood.
He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic
nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies.
As
he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him.
He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said
more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm
hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my
activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago
Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"